As a small counterpoint, I did notice some people did very well at Advent of Code using Rust e.g. sciyoshi was 4th overall.

https://adventofcode.com/2017/leaderboard https://github.com/sciyoshi/advent-of-rust-2017

Without commenting on the original article, this is my main complaint. Plus, I'm not a fan of the sigil heavy syntax, not that modern C++ is much better.